Software

SlickEdit 2009 Evaluation

Lance Robinson — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:00:13 GMT

I was asked to evaluate SlickEdit 2009, so I dropped Ultra-Edit for about three weeks and used only SlickEdit 2009. Here is a little “log” of my thoughts on the switch:

- SE setup asked to add to my system path – I don’t like having to add stuff to my path. What is the benefit of adding this?

[SE Staff:] Many of our customers are heavy keyboard and command line users. Adding SlickEdit to the path allows you to invoke it and its related utilities using the command line.

- The first thing I went to edit was an .htm file. I couldn’t find a way to quickly launch the browser to see the browser view of the document. Ultra-Edit has this and I use it a lot. Later on, I discovered that I can add an “HTML” toolbar, but I wish it would just automatically add that toolbar when I am editing an .htm/.aspx/etc document.

- The next thing I went to edit was a .cs file containing one small class. I loved the way SE showed me a list of all the class members, and when I click a class member it jumps to that spot in the code. I wished it could let me “collapse to definition” like Visual Studio does – and it turns out, it does!

[SE Staff:] Check out View > Function headers. You can also invoke a SlickEdit command to do this. Press ESC to bring up the command line and type in “collapse-to-definitions”. There’s a lot of different ways to collapse text. Look through the items on the View menu plus View > Selective Display. That’s what we call this feature.

- I seemed to recall a slow startup time the last time I tried SlickEdit. There was none of that this time. But, when SE sits unused for a while, and then later I want to drag some files into it…it takes upwards of 4-5 seconds for it to even start responding. I’m not sure what its doing, but the cpu % is at about 5-6 during that time.

- It took me 3 clicks to integrate SE with SVN! Love this feature. At this point I am blaming the slow responsiveness on Vista, and I am thinking I might just be hooked on SE now.

Conclusion:

There are so many features in this editor that it can be hard to find the ones you want (ie, view in browser and the many “selective displays”). Its not as lightweight as UltraEdit, but has many more features than Ultra-Edit. It is a much more functional and powerful editor, but one that requires some system resources.

Four New Developer Toolkit Releases from /n software

Lance Robinson — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:53:57 GMT

Last week /n software announced new versions of three different toolkits, and a brand new SharePoint Integrator product. From nsoftware.com:

NEW: /n software UPS Integrator V2 Released!

Includes easy access to the most popular UPS mail capabilities including shipping, tracking, address verification, rate calculation, and much more.

NEW: /n software SharePoint Integrator Released!

Enables developers to build applications that integrate with Microsoft SharePoint Server, including components for working with popular constructs like Sites, Lists, and Documents.

NEW: PayPal Integrator V3 Released!

Now with support for PayPal Recurring Payments. Connect your application to PayPal merchant services without the use of client side certificates.

NEW: Vital/TSYS Integrator V6 Released!

Now certified for FSA / Healthcare, Retail, Grocery, Restaurant, Hotel, Auto Rental, Direct Marketing, E-Commerce, Debit, EBT, GiftCard, Level II, Level III transactions, and PABP Compliance.

Technorati Tags: UPS, SharePoint, PayPal, Credit Cards, E-Commerce

New Release of IMAP ACL Manager

Lance Robinson — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:29:29 GMT

An update to the IMAP ACL Manager has been published.

Release Information June 4th, 2009 - Release V2.5:

Added check/un-check all box
Verify through UI that permission change applies to subfolders
Added status bar and "busy" indicators
Bug fix: logoff and re logging on resulted in folder tree not showing.
Bug fix: avoid "busy performing current action" errors.

Troubleshooting FTP connections with PowerShell

Lance Robinson — Fri, 22 May 2009 01:22:52 GMT

I find that helping people troubleshoot FTP connectivity issues is much easier if they have PowerShell installed. I can just have them run the NetCmdlets ftp cmdlets with the –debug switch, which displays a trail of information about the communication over the wire. In this way you can see every command send to the server and every response coming back from the server, including what ports a server is attempting to use for ftp data connections. Very often ftp transfer connectivity errors are the result of firewall/ftp server configuration error, and being able to see this raw communication without a network sniffer is quite handy.

PS C:\> get-ftp -server $myserver -user myusername –password ******* -debug                                                    
DEBUG: VerbsCommon.Get-FTP started processing.                                                                          
                                                                                                                        
Confirm                                                                                                                 
Continue with this operation?                                                                                           
[Y] Yes  [A] Yes to All  [H] Halt Command  [S] Suspend  [?] Help (default is "Y"): a                                    
DEBUG: Info: Connecting to FTP server.                                                                                  
DEBUG: Server: 220 (vsFTPd 2.0.4)                                                                                       
DEBUG: Client: USER myusername                                                                                                
DEBUG: Server: 331 Please specify the password.                                                                         
DEBUG: Client: PASS *******                                                                                             
DEBUG: Server: 230 Login successful.                                                                                    
DEBUG: Client: PASV                                                                                                     
DEBUG: Server: 227 Entering Passive Mode (10,0,1,1,225,79)                                                              
DEBUG: Client: LIST                                                                                                     
DEBUG: Server: 425 Can’t open data connection.
DEBUG:    at nsoftware.NetCmdlets.Commands.Core.cs.a(Int32 A_0)
   at nsoftware.NetCmdlets.Commands.GetFTP.DoSSL()                                                                    
Send-FTP : FTP protocol error: 425 Can’t open data connection.

In the example above, you can see that the get-ftp cmdlet sends the PASV command in order to transfer some data (a directory listing). The server response to the PASV command shows the ip and port that the client should connect to (10.0.1.1 is the ip address, and (225*256) + 79 is the port). That IP address (10.0.1.1) is obviously wrong since I am attempting to FTP to a server outside of my local network. This is one example of a misconfigured FTP server.

Right away, with one PowerShell command, I know the cause of the problem and where to go to fix it.

Technorati Tags: PowerShell, FTP, Troubleshooting

Twitter Search Web Part for SharePoint

Lance Robinson — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:00:03 GMT

1. I installed and activated the RSSBus Web Part for SharePoint, which allows me as a SharePoint owner or member to create a customized web part from one of dozens of RSSBus connectors or any RSS/Atom feed I like, such as a Twitter Search RSS feed.

2. I added the RSSBus Web Part to my SharePoint page, and edited its content using the Source Editor. I am using the following template to format the results of my search.twitter.com RSS result:

<rsb:call op=http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=+PowerShell+OR+RSSBus pagesize="5"> 
<P> <A href="[[rss:link#1]]"> <img align="left" src="[[rss:link#2]]" border="0" width="33px"/>
[[atom:author_name]]</A>: [[rss:description]]
</P><BR> </rsb:call>

3. I applied this, and voila, Twitter search results for my keywords (PowerShell or RSSBus in this case) appear in my Web Part! Pagesize tells RSSBus to only return 5 results. You can specify whatever search criteria you want in the URL to search.twitter.com, or you can specify any other RSS feed you like too.

Technorati Tags: RSSBus, SharePoint, Web Part, Twitter

New nsoftware Releases for SharePoint, BizTalk, SSIS

Lance Robinson — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 03:38:24 GMT

Today /n software announced new versions of three more toolkits today:

SharePoint Extensions V3
BizTalk Adapters V3
SSIS Tasks V3

I have been involved in building these products, so if you have any questions feel free to let me know.

Technorati Tags: BizTalk, SharePoint, SSIS

Amazon EC2 developer component

Lance Robinson — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 03:25:38 GMT

/n software’s new Amazon Integrator toolkit is now available (it was just released today!) for software developers:

Amazon Integrator V3 with EC2 & SimpleDB Now Shipping!

Integrate popular Amazon Web Services, including S3, SQS, SimpleDB, AWS, and EC2 with your applications. All Editions Now Shipping: .NET, Java, C++, ActiveX, Delphi, & C++ Builder!

Technorati Tags: Amazon, AWS, nsoftware

PowerShell Server v2 vs PowerShell v2 Remoting via WinRM

Lance Robinson — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 03:16:16 GMT

A lot of people have asked me to explain the differences in the PowerShell Server v2 product with the obvious alternative: PowerShell v2 Remoting via WinRM.

PowerShell Server

The nutshell is that with the PowerShell Server, you are not limited to Windows machines and you don’t need WinRM or any other software other than the PowerShell Server itself and any old SSH client. This means that the “client” machine, where the commands are being sent from, can be anything – a Linux machine, a handheld device in the field, your cell phone, a Windows machine, a php app – ANYTHING that can do SSH. The picture shown is the get-process command being sent to a Windows machine in my office from the free iSSH application on my iPhone. If you’re not familiar with SSH ("Secure Shell"), it is the most commonly used protocol for remote connections between computers, and it is secure and flexible.

As an extended feature, PowerShell Server v2 also comes with a set of free sshrunspace cmdlets that can be used on the client side and are freely distributable. While any SSH client can connect and send commands to the PowerShell Server, these cmdlets bring another level of power to the user by enabling the receipt of actual PSObjects from the PowerShell Server through the SSH connection much like you’d have with WinRM remoting. These cmdlets are the New-SSHRunspace, Remove-SSHRunspace, and Invoke-SSHExpression cmdlets. The first two are used to create and remove SSH protected runspaces, and the latter is used to execute PowerShell commands over that connection and receive PSObjects back from the PowerShell Server.

PowerShell v2 Remoting + WinRM

With PowerShell v2 Remoting via WinRM, you are limited to Windows machines communicating over the web services stack. I believe that MS chose WinRM for mostly political reasons - it is a very heavy protocol based on web services. I won’t get into this argument, but in short, there is a reason why people use SSH and have been using it for a long time. :)

Similarities

Both allow execution of PowerShell cmdlets on a remote Windows machine.
Both are encrypted and secure – PowerShell server operates over an SSH (Secure Shell) connection, and PowerShell 2.0 Remoting works over HTTPS.
Both require PowerShell to be installed on the remote Windows machine.
Both require security and authentication, but in different ways. In both cases a security certificate is used to identify the server. In the case of PowerShell server, connecting users securely authenticate using select Windows security groups defined on the server machine. When using WinRM, by default the credentials are the currently logged in user, but these can also be changed to use a remote account.

Differences:

As mentioned before, both require PowerShell on the remote machine, but each requires a different “server piece”: PowerShell 2.0 Remoting requires WinRM on the remote machine, and PowerShell Server of course requires itself to be installed on the remote machine.
The use of PowerShell 2.0 Remoting requires PowerShell and WinRM to be installed on the client machine (the machine where the commands are being sent from). There is essentially no client-side software requirement for using PowerShell Server since SSH clients exist virtually everywhere: Windows, *nix, mobile devices, web applications, etc. As long as it can establish an SSH connection, a client machine can connect and cmdlets can be executed. So you can be sitting on the beach (you know we all work even when we are on vacation), turn on your cell phone and login to an interactive remote PowerShell console over SSH and send all the commands you like.

Technorati Tags: PowerShell, Remoting, PowerShell Server

How to Execute SQL PowerShell Commands Anywhere

Lance Robinson — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:13:07 GMT

SQL Server 2008 PowerShell Cmdlets + /n software PowerShell Server v2 = Execute SQL Queries Anywhere.

If you don’t already have the SQL cmdlets for PowerShell, you’ll need to download and install SQL Server 2008. A warning for those of you running on x64 machines - you’ll have to export the SQL Server keys in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PowerShell\1 (there should be 2 in PowerShellSnapIns and 1 in ShellIds) and reimport them to Wow6432Node.

If you don’t already have /n software’s PowerShell Server V2, you’ll need to install that and run it on the same machine on which the SQL cmdlets are installed. This server can run as an application or as a service, it doesn’t matter which.

Once you have this setup, you can go to anyplace that has SSH capabilities and open a secure connection to the PowerShell Server. There are SSH clients nearly everywhere: Windows, Linux, Cell Phones, Websites, you name it. Once connected to the PowerShell Server, just send the command.

I created some scripts that I can call (so I don’t have to type so much if I am on a mobile device or something) that issue the actual sql cmdlet commands themselves. One of them is called sql-getsearches.ps1, and it just tells SQL Server’s invoke-sqlcmd cmdlet to run a stored procedure for me that gives me back the results I want:

$query = "EXEC [table1].[dbo].[sp_LANCE_SEARCH]"
invoke-sqlcmd -query $query -ServerInstance myserver -U myusername -P password

Note: The use of invoke-sqlcmd requires add-pssnapin SqlServerCmdletSnapin100, which I include in my PowerShell Server specific profile (nsoftware.PowerShell_profile.ps1).

If anybody has any questions about getting the SQL Server 2008 cmdlets installed or using the PowerShell Server, feel free to shoot me and email or send me a tweet.

Technorati Tags: PowerShell, PowerShell Server, nsoftware, SSH, Remoting

Technorati Tags: SQL, SQL Server 2008, invoke-sqlcmd

IMAP backup service accepting beta testers

Lance Robinson — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:44:18 GMT

ImapBack:

ImapBack makes a complete copy of your emails, on any IMAP server, from Gmail to Google Apps, to your own custom IMAP server located anywhere in the world! These backups can be stored on another IMAP server, on our servers, or on your local hard drive. You can schedule any interval of backups (Daily, Hourly, Weekly, Monthly) as well as creating a backup on-demand.

On a related note, if you need an easy way to view and control IMAP access control, check out my IMAP ACL Manager application.

Technorati Tags: IMAP, Backup